ANGO, ANG1, ANG2, ANG3, ANG4, ANG5, ANG6, ANG7, ANG8

cdgoldin

Member
My dual-boot (Windoze 7 / Linux Mint) has the following files on the C: driver: ANGO, ANG1, ANG2, ANG3, ANG4, ANG5, ANG6, ANG7, ANG8. Apparently they were placed there by EasyBCD. What is their function? Can I remove any or all of them?
 
Those are put there by Ubuntu I believe, I'm using a Google search, and I don't advise deletion of any of them. I don't use anything Linux etc. on my machine but if you are having problems delete all Linux/MintUbuntu entries from EasyBCD when in Windows 7 and then re-enter the Ubuntu partition using the "Edit Boot Menu" page, making sure you use the correct drive letter as seen in Windows 7.
 
Why would Ubuntu be writing on my C:\ drive when it (actually Linux Mint) is installed on another disk entirely? But perhaps you are correct, because my other dual-boot machine (W10-x32 and W10 x-64) doesn't have the ANGx files. :frowning:
 
Those are put there by EasyBCD and they are related to the boot entries in some way. I see them on my windows 7 C: drive and as I was experimenting with the EasyBCD feature of booting ISO files, when I added boot entries in the menu, new ANG files were created. If I deleted a boot entry, an ANG file was deleted. Right now I have ANG0,ANG1 and ANG2 on my C drive but I only have two boot entries (into window 7 or to Ubuntu on another drive.

Hope this helps you.
 
No, it doesn't help in the least. I now have 21 ANGxx files, and I have no idea what their function is or whether or not I can delete them. There is no doubt they are put there by EasyBCD. It is ludicrous that no one with NeoSmart can tell us anything about them.
 
Been a decade at least since I used Linux but afaik those ANG files are put there by EasyBCD to chain to Linux correctly. Like the auto-configure for XP, EasyBCD puts what's needed where it needs to be in order that everything necessary for a successful boot can be found where the various parts of the boot chain expect to find it.
An excess of ANGs is presumably a history of previous "add entry"s which haven't been cleaned up.
If I still used Linux what I'd do would be Delete the Linux entry from the BCD, scrub all the ANGs and add the Linux entry again to get everything straightened out.
Caveat
Read the first 9 words of this post.
 
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ANG is short for "autoneogrub" and each is a self-contained, fully-configured instance of Grub for Windows and is chainloaded by the Windows bootloader to boot into non-Windows entries added in EasyBCD to the Windows bootloader. They are created by EasyBCD when you add certain non-Windows entries and are usually created on the boot drive (that contains your bootmgr and bcd files) but if it is not mounted they are created on the system drive instead.

I believe they should be cleaned up automatically when removing the associated EasyBCD entry, so you shouldn't be touching them if you're still dual-booting with EasyBCD.
 
@Terry60:

Thank you. That both explains and solves the problem.

I followed your suggestion : I deleted the Linux entry from the BCD using "Edit Boot Menu", deleted all the ANG files from c:\, and added the Linux entry again. That created ANG0, and I can successfully boot into both Linux and Windoze.

The reason I had so many ANG files is:
1) I frequently have to rebuild the BCD after a Linux kernel update (which presumably changes the location of the Linux boot record), because otherwise I have boot problems.

2) Apparently "Reset BCD" does NOT delete the related ANG file(s), although deleting the entry from using "Edit Boot Menu" does.
3) So, every time I reset the BCD and added the Windoze and Linux entries again, it created a new ANG file without deleting the old.

This suggests that instead of "Reset BCD", I should have just deleted and re-added the Linux entry, which is what I will do in the future.
 
@mqudsi

Thank you for the information.

As it turns out,

1) The associated ANG file is deleted when the BCD entry is deleted via "Edit Boot Menu", but not when it is deleted via "Reset BCD".

2) I can safely delete all but the latest ANG file, as it is the only one that is being used. (If I had more than one Linux entry, it could be more complicated to determine which ANG files were in use).
 
Glad my long-term memory is not yet completely shot to pieces. Happy you've now got what you wanted.
Reset BCD is really not a daily-use facility, just there for when the BCD is really f****d up and starting over is the only option.
Delete/Add normally suffices for most scenarios.
No doubt mqudsi will have a think about the possibility of cleaning up some of the stuff external to the BCD in a "reset" in a future build if it's not too problematic.
 
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